Caturday Connections- Florence and Freddy

This week I have the purrleasure of welcoming my cousins, Florence and Freddy, to Caturday Connections!

Tell us a little bit about yourselves.

We’re Florence and Freddy and we are red-foot tortoises. Red-foots originate from South America but we were captive born in England last year as our species are vulnerable to extinction in the wild. We are now nearly a year old and we came to live with our humans last autumn when we were very tiny. We will grow to about 30 cm (12 in) when we are fully grown but that won’t be for lots of years yet. Because we come from the tropical rainforests we like our home to be humid and hot so we have a basking lamp, a UV lamp and our substrata has to be kept damp.

You are my mum’s inheritance… how long do you normally live for?

We will live to be around 50 years old.

How do you spend an average day of your life?

We love to bask under our lamp, take a trip around our tortoise table and soak in our water container.

What’s your favourite hobby?

We love having our bath – once a week we get to have a warm bath and we love it but as we already said we do also soak daily in our water container and we get sprayed with water when our humans spray our substrata to keep it all humid and moist.

What’s it like living with so many other pets under the same roof? Do you like them?

We don’t mind at all because we have a lovely tortoise table home of our own which is just for us. The dogs like to watch us in our baths but we don’t mind that at all. The cats sometimes pass by but they just say hi and carry on going. We don’t like it if they try and put their feet in our table though so the humans don’t let them do that – we have a grid to cover the table when the humans aren’t here to stop them sneaking in when the humans aren’t looking.

I heard that your humans adopted more tortoises too… what did you think about that?

Well to start with we thought we might have to share, but then we found out they were two Hermann’s tortoises. They have to have their own home so we don’t mind. The humans rehomed them because their previous human couldn’t keep them any longer. That must have been really sad for them. They are both 9 years old and they’re called Josie and Gordon. They have their own (much bigger) tortoise table upstairs (we get to live in the human’s lounge) and they have a purpose built outside area too which they go out in on fine, warm days. It’s nearly finished now – it just needs more places for them to hide as they don’t like being out in the open. They are a little naughty because they dig lots – it just means the humans have had to put slabs around the outside to stop them digging out and getting lost in the field. When we’re bigger we will have an outside enclosure too but only for when the humans are around and the weather’s nice – we’re quite fussy like that!

What’s your favourite food?

We love banana and mango but once a week we also get some meat and that’s a firm favourite too. We aren’t too fussy though and love all of our varied diet of fruit and vegetables
Where’s your favourite place to relax?

We have a hide which we both love but we both prefer the end closest to the basking lamp so that doesn’t always work as it’s only wide enough for one of us. We also have a ‘’house’’ area at the end of our table and the humans put lots of bedding in there so we can bury down into it and we both love doing that.

What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done? (Don’t be shy it’s good to get it out in the open.

Florence – I once pooped all over the fresh fruit the humans had just put in for us to eat!

Freddy – I climbed on top of the hide because I could smell the meat the humans had left beside the table to defrost ready for our supper. I lost my balance and fell off and the humans found me stuck on my back and not able to turn over. It was pretty embarrassing!

If somebody asked you for advice and you only had a few minutes to give them your best tip, what would it be?

Take life easy and keep on plodding – you’ll always get where you need to be in the end.

Thank you so much dear Florence and Freddy- great advice there and it was so interesting to find out so much more about you. You really do have a full household with four tortoises, three German Shepherds, three cats, tropical fish and now April’s brother, Digger, on the way too! PAWESOME!